Veronica

[Jim Eshelman]

Did I tell you last year my dad gave him a motorcycle last year for xmas, and that in April Orion asked if he could get a gun? OMG my heart lives outside my body. I never knew fear till I gave birth to him.

I guess... don't watch Easy Rider in the near future. (Or do, since it's so full of love, beauty, and sanity, and the insane parts at the end are already stuck in your imagination.)

He is a wonderful young man and I know he has wanted to move away for sometime now but has been hesitant to leave me. He hates winter and misses his friend.

Pluto is crossing his Sun - going back and forth across it this year. This is life altering, one of the most pronounced life-altering transits someone can have. He's ready to walk through that door and leave who he has been and what he's been about on the back side of the door as it closes behind him. He's so lucky to have this at an age where he is fully adult and starting to decide what his life will be.

Uranus square his Uranus at the same time means he not only is ready for reinvention, he also wants freedom, space, and change. This always hits in the 18-21 time and defines the time for everyone. Progressed Sun conjoins his Uranus, which is a stronger version of the same thing (and, since it's a progression, emphasizes that it's a natural unfolding of his maturation: something intrinsic or incidental). Also, progressed Mars is solidly past opposition to his Saturn, so he's much safer now than he was about three years ago.

[Veronica]

I still have yet to see that movie.

I had reflected on his Pluto transit years ago and thought it best to just trust his choices and be there available if needed. I am thankful for the timing. Pluto square my Sun was powerful for me, and I had a very different sort of environment around me.
Where ever he goes, they will be lucky to have him.

[Jim Eshelman]

I still have yet to see that movie.

I, well, then, knowing you my opinion is that you must.

[Veronica]

I have the feeling that it will make me laugh at myself.

I recall we have talked about it before.
I have a hard time watching long programs, I barely watch any, yet I can sit for hours watching the birds and bees and trees. It is on my radar for someday, like Titanic, but not today.

[Jim Eshelman]

FWIW, it's short: About an hour and a half, which was bizarrely short for movies of its time. Titanic, OTOH, is close to four hours.

As a digression, it seems that every decade has a different "main characteristic" of movies that win Best Picture Oscars. For the 1990s, it seems to me the hallmark was that they were nearly all unusually long. Dances With Wolves (3:56), Schindler's List (3:16), Forrest Gump (short for the crowd at 2:21), Braveheart (2:57), English Patient (2:42) make up half of them.

For the 1960s, the main characteristic was that the majority were musicals - something that's never been repeated since. It was the decade of West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Oliver!, among others (including the playful Tom Jones); but they all came in at about two hours except the 2.5 of West Side Story and the stunning 3.5 of Lawrence of Arabia. (No Best Picture had topped that since Gone With the Wind, the first nearly 4-hour example until the slightly shorter Dances With Wolves.)

Easy Rider wasn't a best picture. In fact, it didn't win any of the "top 6" Oscars or top 7 Golden Globes I track. It was, though, one of the most pivotal, memorable films ever made and probably the first major motion picture to show the real spirit the propelled the '60s drop-out and free love cultures. (Actually, I can't think of another single example of a major theatrical feature film that caught this.)

[SteveS]

Easy Rider (1969) burst into the consciousness of the generational culture of sex, drugs, & rock & roll (my generation). It was made on a very low budget and was a huge cultural commercial success. It opened the doors wide open for the small independent producers/directors to the Hollywood studios bank accounts. This movie alone ushered in the revolutionary Golden Age of Blockbusters for the decade of the 70s, imo. If there is one movie that epitomizes the conjunction of Uranus-Pluto (THE Revolution!) in the late 60s---no doubt about it—it was Easy Rider.

There is a very interested story how this movie got produced/directed told by Peter Fonda (RIP). It can be found free on youtube. All the movie actors/actresses made this movie completely stoned on great Gaunga (Vietnam) and LSD, the main reason imo why it became a huge cultural success. It proved to the Hollywood Studio Executives that the days of making movies with Rock Hudson & Doris Day were history and the times of sex, drugs, & rock/roll had arrived in Hollywood. I never will forget the night (stoned out of my mind) I saw this movie in a 500 rocking chair’s Theater to a sold-out audience, and came out saying to myself---OMG---this movie is going to gross huge amounts of $.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC30u35LII8

[Jim Eshelman]

I was too young to see it. However, a school friend worked the projection booth at our town's small theater, so... I saw it.

OMFG!!!

And yes, the stories we learned after the fact. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper (Hopper insisted on directing and IIRC Peter just said Sure!) were the foundation of it, but Jack Nicholson (who in 1969 already had 29 roles behind him including The Little Shop of Horrors, and in the next couple of years would go on to film Carnal Knowledge and Chinatown, on his way to Cuckoo and others. Lordy, these guys were EXPLODING into their careers. This movie caught them just at a perfect moment. Phil Spector popped in (he liked doing things like that).

It opened a week before we landed on the Moon and a month before Woodstock!

[SteveS]

Jim wrote:

It opened a week before we landed on the Moon and a month before Woodstock!

Great observations. More parts of the Revolutionary times experienced by Planet Earth through the after effects of the Uranus-Pluto conjunction (1967).

Peter Fonda tells the story: He was at the Academy Awards listening to the President of NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) tell the audience more wholesome family movies needed to be produced. Peter thought to himself---F**k this—the industry needs more films his generation can identify with. After the Academy Awards his mind hatched the idea of Easy Rider. He called his buddy Dennis Hooper and told him about his ideas for Easy Rider and told Dennis he wanted him to direct Easy Rider. Dennis said Great—but where we gonna get the $. Peter said he thought he would be able to get his foot in the door with Columbia Pictures and Peter was able to sell the ideas of Easy Rider to Columbia with a tiny budget of 360-400 thousand $. The rest is Uranus-Pluto history---Easy Rider grossed over 60 million at the box office---stunning/shocking (Pluto) executives in Hollywood. Easy Rider was the first of the first Blockbuster Movies to hit the small Theaters in America, setting the stage for the executives of Hollywood to loosen their purse strings to the new gang of independent producers/directors who were living in their cars waiting for their chance to make movies for their generation. It truly was a pure Uranus-Pluto movement which swept Hollywood and I got to play a small role in this Great Uranus-Pluto Hollywood movement by becoming a film booker for a small Theater Company in Alabama in 1970, with full freedom (my partile Sun-Uranus 90) to contract any movie I desired for the Company. My natural talent of “knowing” which movies to book made this small company a small fortune, I was looked upon by the older generations of stockholders as a King. “It’s good to be a King”….. but it was actually Regulus sitting on my MC which granted me my Movie Kingship in the 70s.

[Veronica]

Well, I'm glad Mr. Fonda took the initiative.....I think it would be interesting to see those three fellows charts for that period. I have been looking into charts of authors to see what was moving when they published their works and it has been very illuminating, I'm sure the same would hold for producers of other arts as well.

Easy Rider brings back thoughts of my oldest brother leaving home to go be a long haired dirty footed beach bum as my dad called him. I knew back then he had to leave too, but it still hurt and was confusing to me as child as to why.

I put in my copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show DVD as a compromise. Now that's a movie I can sink my teeth into, nothing like a little Time Warp to get me all silly silly happy again.
https://youtu.be/umj0gu5nEGs
Brings back memories of me playing Magenta, and throwing toast with a cast of fun loving strangers, and oh my dont get me started about Tim Currys thighs!! lol.

Steve, did you show that movie?

[SteveS]

V asked:

Steve, did you show that movie?

OMG, YES! Every summer when school was out I would buy Rocky Horror for 35 $ and bring it back to Albertville & Decatur Al for Midnight Shows in our Indoor Theaters. Patrons would dress-up in their favorite characters or just put on crazy costumes and have a blast! When Time Warp would come on the screen--they would start dancing in the isles in tune & step to the characters on the Big Screen. We would sell out the shows. Our patrons loved Rocky Horror and had so much fun watching these Midnight Shows every summer.

[Jim Eshelman]

Steve, by 1969 Uranus-Pluto had moved on except thst we were still in the strong wake of its mighty force. What made '69 a big deal - Moon landing, Woodstock, East Rider, and much more was the Jupiter Uranus conjunction at the start of Virgo.

Funda, though, was clearly moved by the Uranus-Pluto to conceive and do the show; and Steppenwolf' s "Born to be Wild" broke out as the anthem of thst summer.

[SteveS]

Indeed Jim--that Jupiter-Uranus conjunction very important. They were very unique/exciting times for all kinds of expressions for freedom.

[Veronica]

I wanted to note that I feel one expression of this years SSR manifesting in the background of my life this year seems to be the murder trial of my nieces killer. She was young and troubled and in a very hostile situation that ended gruesomely. It happened in another town so it's very difficult for us all here to show up to court, and the zooming is very restrictive due to the horrific nature of the crime.
My SSR Venus/Mars conjunction near my own Venus touches on my feelings.

[Jim Eshelman]

What are the feelings? (I could guess but I don't know.) What's the experience of going through that?

This also sounds like your two exactly angular Plutos, including a Venus-Pluto conjunction.

[Veronica]

So much to say... and, yet, nothing to say... and, yet, I don't want this post to go unacknowledged.

First, I totally get the feelings. I think it is the Aquarius in us that, if we're going to be true to ourselves, means we're ultimately outsiders and castoffs. It's excessive to say we're pariahs, but sometimes that's the form the role takes. It's definitely our "job" to stand outside most of the rest and serve as unpleasant voices from the wilderness. Sometimes, in the course of living life that way, we get to be part in the rest (but usually not - and there is hurt in just how infrequently that occurs).

I made a choice early in life that I'm pretty sure wouldn't work for you: I accepted that, whatever happened in the short run in my life, it wasn't likely my lot ever to be really liked, that I'd be mostly an outcast or a voice on the fringe. In 5th grade when I learned the word "ostracized" I was amazed that someone had created a word just to describe me. (Of course, it wasn't only about me - many other people get to own the word, too - but it felt so intimate and central that it seemed it was just my word.

There's no way, Veronica, that you are an embodiment of humanity's hatred, and you're too strong to be its victim. Nonetheless, I get that sometimes it will seem like their discomfort is centered on you, that you're the hot compress that sucks all the poison out of the damaged. There's little chance of that poison not staying at least briefly in you - at best, it passes through - but the compress can be rinsed and reapplied. It's not your poison, but I think you do draw it out of the damaged.

Also - though I wasn't there to witness the incident you described - I don't think it was hatred at you either. You just got a reminder that a lot of people are unhappy with their lives, angrily think they need more than they're getting, and truly don't want to go above and beyond. Their well isn't as full as your well. They're disconnected from the ceaseless streams of love to which you stay connected.

Your willingness - actually, your need - to go above and beyond, to pour out the Aquarius streams into the world, to infuse parched land with life and culture and human civility - isn't something most people are going to bring (or have the capacity to bring).

You are not, of course, an archetype of the collective hatred of humanity - you lead with your kindness (look how you centered even that painful sentence on the Aquarian theme of collective humanity). You exist to pour forth the streams. But, in your Aquarius-Scorpio soul there are, indeed, some things that most easily attract others' ire. Scorpio, of course, is a common target of maligning. Many ancient astrologers treated Aquarius the same way due to its rulership by Saturn, most of them regarding it as one of the worst of the signs (Manilius was a striking exception). I've always thought this was because there was no context for understanding the outside of society Aquarius in a Roman that depended on the safety of everyone's civil conformity. - So, while you're obviously not a figure of hatred, you are an easy hub of misunderstanding. You need to be yourself authentically and there's no reason to think other people will ever understand you or get who you really are because, well, that's not how they roll.

Your dream of ancient alienation BTW struck me as an archetype-rich dream acknowledging the part of you that is the goddess spirit that departed human tribes ages ago and has been trying to find places on Earth where it can settle as it once did. And, while most turned away, a few persisted in trying to find you.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with the dork at work. Your recent SLR has Pluto in the exact degree of Ascendant and a foreground Mercury-Pluto conjunction. A confrontational communication and something to shake your reality seem to have been inevitable; but also, something that would set your mind on a path of introspective reassessment.

Thinking of you today Jim as you travel for your birthday..
I wanted to bump these words, your loving support and insight that was indeed a hand to hold in dark times. Not only do I love you very much, but I also like you as a person and am grateful for all these years getting to know you. I think Aquarius people especially need to remind each other of our love, so here's your reminder........theres a silly ol lady in the woods of NY who feels you are a bonafide celestial Star of unequaled proportions who makes the world a better place!!
Have a blessed day in every way my friend!!

[Jim Eshelman]

[Veronica]

Unbeknownst to me on Monday January 30th the year 2023 at 11:36 am. Greenwich Mean Time I started a project.

I had been experimenting with painting different celestial objects in the sky strictly from my fantasy up until this point.
At that point, I started painting the constellation Virgo.

Since that time I have progressed through the zodiacle constellations and as of today October 14th Monday 2024 at approximately 9:51 a.m. I completed all 12 zodiacal constellation paintings.

Before I started painting constellation of the zodiac, I had been painting whimsical images of stars from my own mind, not real constellations.

I was applying my creative nature to the generous art supplies I had accumulated through motherhood, odds and ends playfully experimenting at home at the kitchen table whilst mothering and in between times of duty.

They were silly teeniebopper mass marketed lisa f rank style garious and glitterasticly overdone. They were like my babies though, in a way. Each picture a fantastic celebration of my time spent home with my children warm fed and happy around me.

Those memories are priceless to me, and looking at those pictures I can recall the finite details of each of these days spent happily with my little family, doing normal everyday mundane boring stuff for the most part but with twists and turns and highs and lows like life is.

I was inspired to paint a picture for my son for his own wall, a picture filled with my love for him. So for my son's birthday I painted him the constellation Orion.

That was the original stepping stone of my idea to paint the constellations.


Once I had painted my son's painting and was so pleased with how it turned out I showed my father, who suggested I sell them. I was inspired to paint him the constellation Virgo, as an honor to Jim and his work bringing the stars to life for me. The diligent work of Jim, Don and Garth using Spica gave me a much needed anchor to my overflowing life. Learning about Space and Time and stars and planets and angles and returns and our galaxy whizzing around has given me much needed peace of mind and heart.

After I had painted Virgo
I wanted to paint one for my daughter's sign Libra as well.
After Libra I figured I should do my own sign. When I finished Aquarius I had no more frames to paint so I moved on to experimenting with my technique of glitter and glue on multipurpose sheets of paper. The weight of the medium was adjusted during an experimental phase of painting nebula portraits and I resumed painting the zodiac.

I owe most of my understanding of the natures of the constellations and thier stars to Jim, his forum and his books most notably his new book, which I would contemplate and incorporate into the image. I also relied on several NASA sites, as well as Wikipedia for astronomical raw data about our findings in different regions of space and elemental properties found therein.

Once I had progressed through the first 3 paintings and run out of frames, I had a strange but powerful feeling that I must not abandon this work, that these pictures were so so very beautiful and filled with so so so so much love, that my other family members, otherbeloved friends needed to be included....just in case they saw me and the kids pictures and asked "what about my sign, how does my sign look, what do I look like to you..." I had to keep painting somehow till I had worked through each sign, studying it and painting what I felt and knew and understood, with lots of love and acceptance and as much time and space as each one needed to get done in it's own unfolding.

I really miss my beloved Rae, her sign this last one Pisces was so challenging until it wasnt. It was so messy and mixed up until at the end it wasnt.

I did not plan to do this project. No more then I ever planned to get pregnant. It just sort of happened, Ironically ending polar opposite of where I started, which was not planned but I just kept putting off doing Pisces because I didnt want to think of Rae dying, my dads a lunar pisces, Loki bird, so much that I didnt want to face about what's real and not real in my life.

I am thinking I would like to frame the loose sheets and add a touch more glow in the dark glitter to them, so I may add to them in the future. but for all extensive purposes I'm done with the 12 signs of the zodiac. Each one is so beautiful, so wonderful and unique just like each one of us.

[Jim Eshelman]

Wow! This is exciting!

Do you have a way to let us see your work?

[Veronica]

Thanks for the interest, I am very excited about them.
It’s a super dark and wet day today so it is taking a bit longer for the glue to dry, but I’m hoping to be able to take Pisces picture in an hour or so and then share a link.

I want to figure out the best way to scan them, being they are all glitter the lighting for picture taking makes all the difference in how they look. Some photos I have taken make them look flat and matte almost, yet other lighting makes them look alive and moving, dancing almost like they do in reality.
I have them encircling my room, it gives new meaning to the term The Living Room.

I am going to paint our planets next, on smaller sheets that I can move as the planets move through the signs. It is very much a cognitive aid for me as it helps me construct charts for moments in time very easily in my mind once I am oriented correctly in the room.

Not that I have any sort of business sense, nor interested in selling things, but I did think that they would make a cute sticker collection for kids to stick on their tablets as they like to do, and that a whole set of them in some youngsters hands might illuminate the fact we all are beautiful and vibrant, and each signs blessings and challenges are needed for the zoo to be complete and whole.

[Veronica]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/U2ad6CLuZxSCSiFR8

I hope that works for sharing them.

It was an invaluable excersize for me, where I explored the roots of my feelings and was guided by Jim’s words from his new book Handbook of Sidereal Natal Interpretations to explore my own perspective and experience of the astrological world we live in.

I would like to also try to create these as just black and white ditto sheets so that I can try different combinations of colors and glitter and glue. I think there is an app for that, but I think I also can do it in a word document easy enough.

You might want your sunglasses before you click the link.

[Jim Eshelman]

These are gorgeous!

[Veronica]

Thank you

[Veronica]

Happy Election Day USA!!
I just got home from voting, 7:30 cast ballot #70 in my district. Yea USA. As always I encourage exercising our rights, so please take a few moments out of this day to make your voice be heard and counted.
Regardless of who wins, I still will get up early everyday, rejoicing I'm ali e,giving thanks for the new day and all the opportunities it presents and doing my best to be the very best version of me I can be. My life is my responsibility and I am the one making the choices, and I choose love and happiness and hope mixed with hard work, determination and countless support from the entire galaxy without whom I am Nothing.
Have a blessed day in every way everyone!!

[SteveS]

[FlorencedeZ.]

[Veronica]

My last lunar return with my son living with me ended on the 2nd, my new Lunar beginning on the 3rd.
On the morning of his departure He set out, car fully loaded, to run a last minute errand.
I mark those events in my heart, like the last time he sat on my lap, or the last time I dropped him off at school, moments like precious jewels faceted by the most skilled lapidarist.
He called me from the store because his car wouldn’t start and he didn’t know why.

I hesitate to talk about my children and their lives as I feel talking about people when they are not involved in the conversation is bad manners, not polite, unfair and disrespectful, So I’m prefacing this with the disclaimer that everything I say is actually all about me and who I am as a person, and will tell tell you little about anything else.

I have worried about that boy since before he was even conceived, and the worry only got stronger as he grew. My Son has very deep feelings and his frustration level can get overloaded. I have worked to express to him how we have had horrible, inconvenient, expensive, tragic, shocking, aggressive and sickening events arise in our lives before, and that we have survived every single one, 100%. I don’t know what else to say, he doesn’t want to hear about counting the blessings we have, to think positive, or any sort of cheering up retoric. I just admit to him, that yup this moment sure sucks, what a yucky thing to happen, and what can we do right now to help us move beyond, what do we need to do.

So when his car didn’t work I drove over and tried a million and one car tips and tricks and divined that with the heavy load the old battery burnt out the starter, so I sat with him and we got it towed to a shop for the repairs. He was so devastated and heartbroken….he had wanted to be doing so many other things on this day of his planned departure.

This last lunar return had my daughters birthday and my sons moving. I am so very grateful that I took that time off from work to just be home and around both my children, to listen to them laugh as they played games and talked with friends. We had home cooked meals together as both kids were also off from work. It was just such a nice time. I didn’t get sorrowful, or nostalgic though I did have a few moments of sadness knowing I will miss his love and laughter and light in my home. At times I felt like I was being inundated with so many different feelings, joy, thanks, fear, energized yet depleted, full and empty, the host of everything was going on.

At 10:44pm on the eve of the 28th I waved goodbye till I could no longer see him. Shortly before then I think the whole house had sadness, as we each were in our own rooms, I with a dread of the inevitable, doing all I could to not selfishly sob with grief out loud at the loss of such a beautiful life we have lived all together. It has been such a pleasure to be his mom, such a priceless gift and I am so honored to have gotten to watch him grow up to be such a good person.

He made it, almost didn’t. He ran into more car troubles on route but he got there and got the car fixed and is all moved in to a nice place with his friends around him. A part of me hopes that he never misses me.
My daughter has been wanting the bigger bedroom for a while so she is moving things around and cleaning like crazy. I think that the house itself will stay clean longer now. Patrick and Loki were showing signs of confusion and loss very strongly the first week he was gone. I am concerned more so about Loki as they were like siblings in a way.

My new SLR with the Pluto Mars is spot on, and causes me to think that Mars has a lot more to do with Love then it is generally given credit for.